But what if we were only going to run that part of the scene once — and what if the poison Reed used to kill his victims was already in my body at that point?
Something inside me turned to stone.
If I had to die, at least I could try to take Reed out with me.
“So what did Paige do wrong?” I asked.
Reed snapped to attention. “What do you know about Paige?”
“Nothing.”
“Paige Pollan could have been a great actress.” He practically spat the words out. “But she couldn’t take direction.”
“So what did you do to her?” I swallowed hard. “She never finished the scene. You … you drowned her, didn’t you?”
Reed’s stare was perfectly emotionless. “She deserved it.”
“You did it here?” A horrible thought occurred to me. “Did you bring them all here?”
Was Marnie somewhere on the property at that very moment? I thought of the locked door in the corner of the screening room.
He frowned slightly, in a way that answered my question. “Whenever Jonathan went out of town, I would come here and explore. It’s a great house, you know. There’s an unfinished cellar off the chauffeur’s quarters that leads all the way to the guest house. That’s how I found Diana’s studio. How I found her movie.” He sat back, and his voice turned cold. “Paige refused to learn her lines. She kept messing up. I could tell she was doing it on purpose, trying to buy herself some time. You wouldn’t do that, would you, Willa?”
I shook my head.
“Finally I’d had enough. It was my third time — I knew how things were supposed to go. She was being difficult just for the sake of making me angry. So I gave her something, took her out to the pool, and then I … took care of her.”
“You drowned her … in Jonathan’s pool. And then moved her back to her apartment and made it look like a suicide.”
Reed smiled a ghastly, demonic grin. “Yes. But I took my time with it. I made sure she knew that she’d made me angry.”
A coating of cold fire spread over my skin.
“You made me angry, too, Willa. So I’d advise you to be as well behaved as you can for the rest of our time together. Because I can say with complete certainty that you’d prefer the easy way over the hard way.”
Part of me couldn’t even catch my breath. The other part of me was finally soaking in the idea that this was really happening.
I was caught by a psychotic serial killer.
If I couldn’t find a way out of this, I probably had two hours left to live.
And now he was telling me in fairly clear terms that I had two choices: one, cooperate, and make my death relatively easy. Two, fight back … and risk dying horribly.
It was as though Reed could tell what I was thinking.
“Want to know how I did it?” he asked, leaning forward. “I waited until the pills made her sleepy. Then I took her out and pushed her into the pool. She managed to get herself to the edge. And then I peeled her hands off the side and pushed her back out into the water. She was so tired she couldn’t swim anymore, so she tried to float … and I took the pool skimmer and pushed her down. But only for a few seconds. Then I let her float back up and try to catch her breath. Then I pushed her down again.”
As he spoke, my lungs burned and my stomach went sour. I felt as though I was there with Paige, being pushed underwater. I remembered the feeling, from my first night here, of not being able to surface. My whole chest ached – and my heart ached, now that I had a sense of the fear and pain she’d experienced in her last moments.
No wonder she was an angry ghost.
But where was Paige now — when I needed her? Why wasn’t she here, helping me? She’d been so eager for me to uncover her killer’s identity … but what if that was all she’d wanted?
I’d thought having a ghost in the house was scary. But that didn’t compare with the paralyzing fear of her having abandoned me.
Reed stood up and walked toward me. In my panic, I struggled in my chair and bumped the table, nearly knocking over the wine glass at my place setting.
Reed caught it before it could fall. He turned my chair to face him and crouched down to whisper softly, only inches from my ear.
“It took ages, Willa,” he breathed. “And she fought and fought … she tried so hard. Even though she knew the entire time that she would never win.”
Tears filled my eyes, but I didn’t blink. I was afraid blinking would cause them to spill over and smear my makeup.
I have to be good. I have to do what he says.
Even if he was going to kill me anyway, I had to do what he said.
“You’re not like her, though,” he said. “You’ll behave, won’t you?”
I nodded.
“Say it out loud.”
I moved my lips in the shape of the words, but no sound came out.
“I’ll behave,” he said. “Say it.”
“I’ll behave,” I repeated.
He touched my cheek with the palm of his hand. “I know you will. Now, shall we run our lines again?”
After we’d been through the scene about four times, Reed came over and cut my hands free. He wanted to get started on the blocking.
We were getting close to the final performance.
“Try swirling the wine in the glass,” he said. “Like you’re lost in thought.”
I’d never drunk anything from a wine glass before, so it felt awkward in my hand. Apparently I was doing it wrong, because he smacked the table impatiently.
“If you’re not even going to try —”
“I am trying!” I protested. “I’ve never done this before.”
He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Willa. It must be frustrating. I have to remember … a director is like a coach.”
“Is that what this is about for you?” I asked. “Being a director?”
“It’s about creating moments,” he said. “Crafting them.”
“But … I thought making movies was about making things that people will enjoy.”
He shook his head. “That’s commercialism. I’m not interested in crass efforts to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I want to make something powerful. Something with impact. Something that conveys my vision absolutely — even if nobody else ever sees it. Something I can … control. So much of life is out of our control, and it just makes me feel so … insignificant.”
“That’s why you leave the people you kill out for other people to find? To be significant?”
Reed looked at me, a coldly superior gleam in his eye. “Because I know it makes their lives that much more interesting. It gives them something to aspire to.”
“You mean you like the attention,” I said.
He scowled. “I don’t care about the attention.”
I wasn’t eager to draw his anger, so I sat back without replying.
“Now,” he said. “Let’s go through this one more time. I’ll try to be more patient.”
We ran the lines again. This time, when I picked up the glass to swirl it, he picked up his own and showed me how to move my wrist to keep the liquid moving inside.
When we got to the end — almost the end — he sat back. “Very good.”
My back was tired from sitting up so straight, and my butt was numb from being in the chair for hours on end. Outside, the day had darkened into twilight. How many hours had passed while I was unconscious?
“I think we might be ready.” He smiled at me — a smile that under any other circumstances could have been described as warm, maybe even caring.
“Ready?” I asked. “No, I need more time to —”